First of all, some back story. When we got married, we had decided Chad would be in charge of the cooking. A few months into our marriage I told him he need to start planning a menu so that we weren't spending so much at the grocery store. See with a menu, you know exactly what food items you need for the week... so you don't go spend $300 dollars on food only to find you don't have what you need. Also, you aren't grocery shopping every day. With a set menu and a grocery list to match you can cut your grocery shopping down to once a week (or every other week which is what we do now). After we moved into my in laws house, we changed the menu and grocery list so that we all eat the same thing. However, my husband started nursing school and we found it was too much work for him to do the menu and the cooking... so after a struggle I took it over. See I never enjoyed cooking too much... it was a necessity to get what I wanted: food. But, I am slowly coming to enjoy the planning and the preparation and it brings me much joy when someone tells me they really enjoyed my dish. But, like almost everything in my life... I need a system that fit me so that I wouldn't be stressing out about the menu, grocery shopping, and cooking. The system has gone through some major changes since it started.
Originally our menu started on Friday and went till Thursday. We did this because the store we shopped at most (our local Farmer's Market) had $10 off $50 coupons on Thursday. So I would do the menu and list on Wednesday, we would shop on Thursday and be ready for the new menu Friday. Well this is the last week I will (hopefully) do the menu on list on Wednesday. See for the new year I wanted to get all of my planning and schedules starting on the same day (my week starts on Monday, so I want my menu to start on Monday). Plus, we are finding we shop at Costco more (because we found buying in bulk is saving us money). Also, I plan start menu planning weeks ahead of time, so if we want to start shopping at the market again, we can still go on Thursday to get the special, I just will already have the menu done. I am hoping by planning ahead more, I can scour coupons and ads and save us even money. Also, at the moment my in laws are paying for the majority of the food (unemployment sucks!) and so I started doing the menu/list for 2 weeks, instead of 1, so that we could do the shopping the week she gets paid... a little easier on her pocketbook.
With that I give you: our Menu.
Since I do the menu and grocery list most weeks, I know what kind of leftover stuff we have from the menus before... I usually pick recipes that use those up. We rarely end up with extra fruit and veggies... which is good as you want these fresh. I know right now I have some bacon chicken tenders, bread, lunch meat, waffles, 1 bag of frozen veggies and pepperoni in the deep freeze. Upstairs in the fridge/freezer there is some quacamole, frozen corn, frozen green beans, some egg souffle's and sausage patties. In the pantry (which is either in the island cabinets or in the laundry room if its overflow) I know there are a few fruit leathers, tomato sauce, stewed tomatoes, ketchup, an unopened box of granola bars, some rice, and a few can goods that I have been trying to use up (they aren't really things we use, they were my in laws before we moved in). Remember we shop at Costco, so when I say things like "unopened box of granola bars" I am talking probably 30ish bars... enough for at least 2 weeks worth of snacks since we don't eat the same snack every day. These are the items I will try and use up first. I will pick recipes that use a few of these so I only need to add a few ingredients too. This will be a big shopping week... not only because it will have 2.5 weeks worth of food, but also because we have used up most of our prepacked foods and those will need to be restocked. We are a busy family, all on different schedules, so I only really "cook" 2 or 3 meals a week, the rest are prepacked items we just have to reheat. And when I say meals, I mean dinner... Lunch is the leftovers from the night before. Really I cook 8 servings for dinner, not 4.
So now that I know what food I have to work with, its time to fill in that menu. First, I fill in the dates in the Day calendar. My current menu/list will include the dates of 11/11-11/27. Next, I will pull out my monthly calendar and note any days/meals I know we won't be eating at home. If you were paying attention, you probably know there is a holiday in that date range-Thanksgiving. This year, the four of us will be spending Thanksgiving in Branson with my father in laws sister and 2 of her children's family....We stay in a condo and yes we will need food... But This will get its own menu/list so for now I just marked Branson/Thanksgiving on the times we will be gone. We are leaving Wednesday afternoon and won't be back till Sunday evening. I am filling out my menu in pencil... in case I need to change it. (as a side note... I also wrote down two things in my planner at this stage: on Monday, 11/21 I wrote menu/grocery list so I know I will need to do a menu/grocery list for the next 2 weeks on that day-unless I get it done early! Also, on 11/e21 I wrote down shop for Branson/Thanksgiving so I remember that we didn't buy food for our trip yet)
Besides our trip, this will be a quiet time for us... not many events that affect the menu (at least not any more than normal-more on this in a minute). I know that my uncle is coming into town this coming weekend, so I will probably plan something easy Saturday night in case we decide to go out to eat with them and my parents. I also know what our normal schedule generally looks like: MIL and FIL eat at church most wednesday nights and go out to eat after church on Sunday- so these are light/easy meals. I have class tues/thurs evenings- so the meal has to be something I can put together before or a crock pot meal that my husband just has to divide. My FIL leaves for work at 4:30 am, so lunches are always done the night before. My husband now works 11-11:30 usually Mon/thurs but sometimes the days change- so on those nights dinner has to be done before he leaves for work. Also, from looking at my calendar I know his weekend to work will be during this menu, but luckily he only works till 7:30 on those days, so it isn't necessary to have dinner ready before he goes, he eats when he gets home. Also, my MIL works evenings on Tuesdays, but she waits till she gets home to eat so that doesn't require special planning either. Also, from looking at my calendar I know I start watching my nephew 3 days a week on the 14th... which means I won't be home during the day, so these will either be crock pot meals or prepackaged. See how busy we are and how conflicting our schedules are. We rarely all eat together, which is sad, but that's the way it is.
Now, on to diets.... we are all trying to lose weight and get in shape (with the exception of my FIL who doesn't really want to, but we don't give him a choice). We don't restrict ourselves on anything, we just eat in moderation. We also eat 3 meals and 2 snacks a day. The snacks are light-granola bar, yogurt, etc. Also, my mother is diabetic... so I have to watch the amount of sugar. We generally have 1 cheesy meal and 1 pasta meal a week. I also try and make sure there is protein with our meals. Also, I try and pack as many fruits and veggies as I can.
I better start filling in this menu if I want to finish by the time my MIL gets home from work! (we are doing the shopping today, because the rest of the week schedule is crazy).
First, I fill in snacks... these are the easiest for me (besides lunch which I just have to copy dinners). Generally our snacks are :Granola Bars, Yogurt, Cheese Snacks (much to my husbands dismay....I snuck this snack in), and Almonds and Fruit Leathers. We have tried other things and I need to get some more options, but that's for another week. I think this week I am going to use the rest of the Cheese up, but not buy anymore... see if we can't find something else at Costco today. If you have snack ideas that are easy, light and healthy... please share!
Next I fill in breakfast. Again, we have a rotation. Waffles/Sausage/Fruit, Jimmy Dean Sandwiches, and Cereal/Smoothie/or Oatmeal. I usually do the last one on the weekends, when we generally have more time. My husband is getting sick of waffles, but we still have a huge box... when its empty I will switch to something else. These have to be prepackaged because we all get up at different times and don't have time to make much. Again, if you have ideas... please share. Today, at Costco I will look at our options. we had muffins one week and those are good.. I might add those in.
Now on to the hardest part: Dinner/Lunch. We have a few prepackaged things from Costco we really like: Breaded Chicken Patties and these Pita Cheeseburgers we had this time... they have been asked for again. i also think I will repeat the Texas Stew and the Rice Casserole we had this week... they were good! The weather is cold, rainy, and icky this time of the year so I was thinking of a soup or two as well.... to get my recipes I have two many sources: my pinterest boards or this pile of recipes:
These are all the recipes I have either printed or cut out from magazines. That book on top? That was a wedding present from a friend of my moms'. Its a recipe book. Inside it has clear pockets that hold 4x6 recipe cards. I have been slowly transferring my loose recipes into this book. At first, I was doing all them, but now I am just doing ones we have tried and like and would do again. Working on a system for my recipes has been on my To Do list for the last year... its a slow work in progress. I also have a ton of these:
Cookbooks! Not just these, but 3 small totes filled as well. However, I only have a few out and honestly I just don't have the time to look through them. I am hoping that now that I am starting to plan my menus week in advance I can get some recipes from here. And again the plan is that once we pick a recipe from the book, try it and like it, it will be copied and moved to the other recipe book(that will eventually be turned into a few books I am sure). I am too tired today and have to much to do to mess with the recipe stack... so on to pinterest!
I have started to sort some of my boards (they were getting to big) and now have a board just for Crock Pot Meals, one for Soups, one for Burgers and Sandwiches, one for Chicken, etc. As I decide on a recipe, I print it right away and set it aside so it is ready for the grocery list/and for cooking! This is what I have found:
Crock Pot Pizza (we usually do a pizza night of the weekend, I am dying to try this!Plus we have most of the ingredients: we have had 3 cans of pizza sauce for about 2 months now, we always have peppers, onions and garlic around, and I already mentioned I had bacon and peperoni in the fridge.)
Texas Stew (this is amazing, love it!)
Sante Fe Chicken (it sounds yummy, and it will use some of the rice we have)
Baked Potato Soup (will use alot of the same stuff as some of the other recipes)
Quinoa Burgers (this will be a meat free dish, sounds interesting)
Rice Casserole (this will be a side to our chicken patties one day, instead of our normal veggies)
All of those are made in the crock pot except the quinoa burger. Now that I have my cooking items, time to fill in the rest. I added some chicken patties, chicken pot pies, ravioli with pesto sauce, pita cheeseburgers and deli sandwiches. Here it is all complete:
Once we are finished grocery shopping and I know I won't have to make changes... I will type it up. One copy will go upstairs, along with the recipes to sit in the kitchen. Another copy will stay downstairs on my desk (or in my weekly folder once the new year starts), so I know what/if I need to cook that day.
Now, on to the grocery list. I do mine by hand. And I do two of them. My first one will have everything we need on it. Then, I go through the freezer, kitchen, overflow etc and mark off what we already have, then I rewrite the list, separating it into stores and grocery store sections. Be back soon... this takes a bit.
Here is my finalized list:
Not bad for 13 days of food for 4 people. 34 items to buy. I actually had alot more stuff already than I originally thought. After doing the list I made one adjustment to my menu-changed a waffle day to a souffle day to use up the souffles in the freezer. I could take off the chicken broth on this list because we have some frozen... but there isn't really enough in there yet and Costco has a coupon for Swanson broth this week... so I want to get it while we have and then I can choose whether to use the store bought or the frozen.
Next I go through the coupons....
All done! I know this may of seemed like a lot of information and a long post. And you might be thinking... That is much more work than I do for our grocery shopping. Maybe... but do you do a menu? If you don't, at least in my experience, you tend to shop more and pay more. Do you make a grocery list or do you just pick stuff up from the store? If you don't make a list, you probably find that you either don't have what you need or have to go to store alot. And you probably spend more, because you buy a lot, not just what you need? Also do you eat alot? We don't... for budget and diet reasons. So we eat at home alot, meaning we need to have meals planned and food bought. Also, I showed you our schedules, if I didn't plan ahead it would be next to impossible to coordinate meals to fit everyone's schedule. If you are like me and make a menu and grocery list... then your process is probably just as long and complicated, you just do it automatically and don't think about it. I thought my process was simple till I sat down and tried to explain it to all of you!
Anyways, the menu and list is done and now I can take a few days break before I go through the process again.
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